


The Biggest Mistake

by CrimeAlley1048



Category: Batfamily - Fandom, Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 21:58:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8639740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimeAlley1048/pseuds/CrimeAlley1048
Summary: "You know what really needs to be addressed? Bruce's truly terrible treatment of Damian."-Me, on a daily basis





	

**Author's Note:**

> The Clone Incident: (v1) Batman and Robin #9

It took exactly twenty-three seconds after Bruce thought to himself “it’s too quiet in here” for Tim to appear in his doorway— which was slightly longer than Bruce expected.

“Hey.” Tim leaned against the frame, staring guiltily at the floorboards. “I think I screwed up.”

Bruce put down his cup of coffee. “Explain.”

“Damian and I were, you know, in the same room?”

“Right.”

“So we started fighting.”

“Of course.”

“Honestly I don’t remember how it started, but I think I called him a mistake.” Tim glanced up long enough for a split-second of eye contact and for Bruce to wonder what exactly the two of them had broken. He wouldn’t be hearing about it unless there was some kind of damage. Tim went back to watching the floor. “I didn’t think it would hit, but um… I’m pretty sure he started crying.”

“Oh.” Bruce hadn’t been expecting that. Anger, yes— maybe a few fractured bones at the worst— but in his experience there wasn’t much that Damian found genuinely upsetting, and arguments with Tim weren’t on that list. He was missing something.

“Which is new.”

“Yes.”

Tim shoved his hands deeper into the pockets of his jeans and looked Bruce in the eye. “Sorry.”

“Maybe you should tell that to Damian.”

“I would if I could find him, but he ran off. Unless he’s hiding in here, he left the grounds.” Tim dug Damian’s phone out of his jacket and tossed it onto Bruce’s bed. “He left that in the kitchen.”

Fantastic. Damian was hard to track when he didn’t want to be found. Sometimes Bruce had stress dreams about it. “Did you check with Dick?”

“Hasn’t seen him.”

“Jason?”

“He’s in Greece. I don’t know where else Damian would go. He didn’t take his costume.”

That was something, at least. Damian couldn’t do anything dangerous out of uniform, and there weren’t many places he liked to go as a civilian. Bruce had some idea of where he might be.

“I’ll text you when I find him,” he told Tim on his way out the door.

It took thirty-three minutes to drive to Wayne Tower and another four to reach the rooftop. Damian was sitting on the edge, exactly where Bruce expected him to be, swinging his legs over the thousand feet of empty space beneath him. He turned around when Bruce came through the door.

“Hello.”

Bruce handed Damian his phone and sat down beside him. He could see Damian’s face pretty clearly in the downtown glow. He looked perfectly calm. Bruce wouldn’t have guessed that he’d been crying.

“Tim thought you might be upset.”

“I’m fine.” Damian waved away the implied question. “How did you know where I was? Are you tracking me again?”

Bruce shook his head. “Dick mentioned you like to come here.”

“Oh. He wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

That didn’t exactly boost Bruce’s confidence as a parent, but he understood. He was conscious of the penthouse underneath them, the first home Damian had in Gotham— his and Dick’s. Bruce wasn’t supposed to be a part of that.

“He made me promise that I wouldn’t yell at you up here, if that makes it any better. Would you like to tell me what happened with Tim?”

Damian shrugged. “He said I was a mistake. I don’t care to be reminded.”

“Reminded.”

“Yes.”

“That you’re… a mistake?”

“Yes,” Damian nodded. “The biggest mistake you ever made.” He turned towards Bruce, still perfectly straight-faced. “I already know, so you don’t have to pretend. It’s fine.”

For a few seconds, Bruce stared blankly at his son, trying to decide which shocked him more— the words or the matter-of-fact tone. Damian still didn’t look the least bit emotional.

“I don’t have to _pretend_?” Bruce spluttered. “Damian, what on earth would give you the impression that—”

“You told me,” said Damian. “Sort of.”

“I told you?” Bruce didn’t remember saying that— he wouldn’t say that, would he?— but he must have had conversations with Damian while he wasn’t completely lucid, so maybe that was the problem? He didn’t know. How could he not know about this?

“Sort of,” Damian repeated. “Did Grayson ever tell you about the time he resurrected your clone?”

“It came up.”

“The clone told me.” Damian shrugged again. “I realize that it wasn’t actually you speaking, but he had all of your memories, and the statement was consistent with your behavior.”

“Damian—”

“Plus I read your old casebooks. There were similar entries. I assumed it was an accurate reflection of your feelings.”

Bruce remembered those casebooks. Damian was never supposed to see them. “What… exactly did he say?”

Damian ticked off answers on his fingers. “That you feared me being your son more than anything else. That I was a stain on your bloodline. That I was your biggest mistake.”

Bruce pictured Damian in the penthouse underneath them, even younger and smaller, hearing those words in his father’s voice— it was disturbingly easy for Bruce to imagine them in his own voice— while he thought his father was dead. Bruce hadn’t been there. He had never been there. The only memories Damian had about his father made him think that Bruce hated him. Did he still think that?

Bruce felt like he’d been punched in the chest. “You know I would never say those things.”

“But you would think them?”

“I… can’t deny that it’s how I felt in the past.”

“Oh.” Damian’s shoulders slumped fractionally, but his face stayed blank. “I understand. I can’t ignore the person that I was… am. I was upset at first, but I think that—”

“I was wrong.”

“What?”

“I was wrong about you.”

Damian blinked, clearly surprised. Bruce didn’t admit fault often. He raised an eyebrow and offered Bruce his phone. “Can you say that again for the camera, or…?”

“If you need me to,” Bruce sighed. “Listen… the first time I met you, I thought— well I thought you were this… piece in a plan to destroy me.”

“I was a threat,” Damian agreed. “You would have been foolish to dismiss that.”

“You weren’t a threat. You were my son. You were a _child_. That should have been enough on it’s own.” Bruce ran a hand through his hair, thinking about all his other children, the way he’d been so willing to help them. Not Damian. He’d left Damian with the League for years after their first meeting. Years of abuse and murder. If Dick hadn’t done Bruce’s job in every possible sense of the phrase…

“I convinced myself that you weren’t my responsibility. I said that I was protecting myself, or I was protecting Tim. I made lots of excuses. The truth is yes, I did think all of the things that you heard. I’m ashamed of that now.”

He really was. When Bruce thought of all the things he’d done wrong in his life, Damian was at the top of the list. Every time he saw Damian’s scars, he wondered how many of them he could have prevented. How much was two years of damage? How long did it take to undo? How could he have ever looked at Damian without seeing the complexity of him— the ferocity, the kindness, the constant battle for his own soul?

“I was wrong,” he repeated. “The biggest mistake I ever made was thinking that I didn’t want to know you. I regret that more than you can imagine.”

Damian bit pensively at his lip, staring out at city in front of them. Bruce wasn’t sure he believed what he was hearing.

“Here.” Bruce lifted Damian’s hand out of his lap and set his fingers on the pulse point of his own wrist. “I love you. You’re not a mistake. Am I lying?”

“I’ve seen you fool a polygraph,” Damian reminded him. “But… I believe you.”

“Good.”

Damian ducked underneath Bruce’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around Bruce’s chest, leaning into the hug. Good. That was very good.

“I’m so sorry,” Bruce told him.

“It’s fine.”

“It isn’t.” He didn’t think it ever would be. “Did Tim know any of this?”

Damian shook his head.

“I could ground him anyway, if it would make you feel better.”

“He only said it because I called him ‘a garbage can so ineffective it actually became garbage.’”

“Ah.” The usual, then. “I should ground you both.”

“I’m already grounded.”

“What? Since when?”

“February.”

Now that he thought about it, Bruce vaguely remembered an incident with silverware and a broken window. He’d forgotten. Being grounded didn’t typically slow Damian down.

“Hm. I suppose I’d better unground you, in that case.”

“Yeah.” Damian smiled briefly, clearly visible in the city lights. “Thanks.”


End file.
